


Time Past

by HeartlessAngel



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:06:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartlessAngel/pseuds/HeartlessAngel
Summary: They’ll never know Noctis the way Gladio knew him.(ffxvweek: favorite moment)





	Time Past

* * *

Once the dust had settled and the immediate impression of the world’s savior faded, questions began to arise. Who was this True King beyond the sacrifice he had made? People sought the True King’s apostles for answers. Everyone wanted to know the man that had lifted darkness from their world.

Gladio didn’t mind it much, at least not outside of Insomnia. People would approach him with caution, invite him for a beer, flock around him like bees to honey.

“What was your favorite moment with The King?” was a recurrent question. Most, Gladio had learned, wanted it to be moments of grandeur. They wanted to hear about the dense, sparkling air that came with the foreboding presence of the Astrals, about how Leviathan was made to kneel before the one chosen by Bahamut. But Gladio struggled to tell whether he truly remembered those incidents as they had happened or if they had all been tainted by numerous accounts made popular.

No, his favorite moments were mundane. They were of Noctis mumbling in his sleep as he rolled closer to Gladio for warmth when they camped up high, of Noctis knee-deep in mud, cursing like a sailor and glaring at Gladio for wearing his I-told-you-so clear as day on his face.

The moments he cherished the most were those that seemed insignificant at the time; the ones he thought he’d forget first, but now held onto as if they were his one and only raft on the tumultuous sea that was his life. It was the moments he could not speak about; the sly kiss that one morning at the pit stop by the Rock of Ravatogh that became a series of sly and sneaky kisses at every stop on their way to the Vesperpool. The kiss of excitement after they caught the Liege of the Lake, The Kiss, the one there was no turning back from. And the countless promises that followed.

Gladio loved them as much as he hated them, loved because they had been Noctis’ promises, his planning for a future he had once rejected. 

With bangs damp and heavy breaths, fingers tangled in the mess that was Gladio’s hair, body feverish and naked against him, Noctis would ask for his hand, trembling at laying bare his desires that may be thought unfit for a king.

_ “Reign with me, Gladio,” _ he’d say in a whisper. 

His face lightened up every time Gladio said yes. A smile so genuine it revealed new depths of love in which Gladio kept sinking into.

These were the same moments he hated because the gods had laughed at them every step of the way. They had deprived them of taking those moments for what they were, the only moments they’d ever have.

None of this came through in his answers to the curious villagers. Those cherished moments belonged only to him now. And so he repeated the stories they sought for, hoping that no secret tale would escape him when they brought him a fourth beer.


End file.
